Corinna Kirsch and Whitney Kimball

A useful definition of an “art bro”: someone who doesn’t believe in solidarity, thinks the art world is equal as is, and enforces alpha/beta male hierarchies. This comes out of an Ann Hirsch interview with Jennifer Chan for Rhizome. The profile was published a few months ago, but relevant as ever. [Rhizome]

With a weakened Euro, European collectors might be deterred from participating in the spring art auctions. “The euro is just killing Europe, but it’s killing Italy more than anything else,” dealer Otto Naumann tells Bloomberg. [Bloomberg Business]

Investor Frans Broersen wants to see the price of North Korean artworks skyrocket. He’s known for buying up relatively cheap artworks (before anyone else) from Russia around the time of the communist government’s collapse. Now his firm is doing the same with North Korean artworks. [Canoe via Agence France-Presse]

Bertolt Brecht’s heirs have sued German theater director Frank Castorf for putting on a version of Baal that doesn’t stick to Brecht’s original script. [Deutsche Welle]

If you live in Bushwick, it might help if you know how to say more than “taco” in Spanish. Starting this week, Silent Barn is offering Spanish classes for beginners. Go. It’ll be good for you. [Silent Barn]

New York City’s public parks fall into two camps: those funded by millionaires and those funded by the city. Guess which ones are in better shape? [The New Republic]

Christian Viveros-Fauné on Titus Kaphar, an artist who’d been stopped by police on Tenth avenue and accused of being part of a “black ring on art thieves”. What? All too appropriately, Kaphar had been working on a series of paintings about the current civil rights movement. While he finds clichés in some of those paintings at Jack Shainman, others are “a bullet to the heart.” [Village Voice]

India spends far more time reading than we do per week, but at least the British are worse than we are. [Mental Floss]

If you’re willing to line up with hoards of people bitching about subway service, then congratulations! You’ll get pizza. Tonight at 7PM, the Brooklyn Movement Center (375 Stuyvesant Avenue) is hosting a think-tank to hear the public’s complaints about the C train, with pizza. [Brokelyn]

An inflatable cow sitting atop a building. The Internet is filled with so many inflatable cows. Into it. [Flickr]

This is what the pandering art spectacle has come to: at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a tiny fenced-in ice area titled “Monet on Ice,” except the ice isn’t real, and there’s no Monet. [Glasstire]

This is “The Most Famous Middle Eastern Painting,” according to artnet News. [artnet News]

Name the city by its subway map. Only one city made the genius decision to create a circular line which runs through all the other lines. [Washington Post via Metafilter]

Yay! This month marks the return of the Fung Wah, the shittiest and cheapest bus company in the Northeast and possibly the world. Already they’re fucking up, not getting a permit for their pick up location. [Bowery Boogie]

London’s National Gallery will begin outsourcing its gallery assistants to a security firm. Why? Financial reasons. This also sounds like the plot of a movie: Twitter has all the #ngfanfic. [The Guardian, Twitter]

Somebody’s made a fake Faith Holland Facebook account and has been friend-requesting art world women. Watch out. [Facebook]

Guantanamo Diary, the only book released by a current prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, will be released today. [Hachette Book Group]

Get into the spirit of the season with creepy, overly capitalistic Christmas commercials from the 1980s. “Taste all the ways butter helps your holidays throughout the year!” [YouTube]

On the history of classical Roman torture in Hollywood film. [The Awl]

Adrian Chen follows Swedish journalist Robert Aschberg, whose TV show Troll Hunter confronts Internet trolls IRL. The point, according to Aschberg: “The agenda is to raise hell about all the hate on the Net.” [Technology Review]

Good news for the ICA: Political activist Barbara Lee has gifted the museum with over 40 artworks, many by female, international, and politically active artists. [Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston]

Mo’ money for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which has decided to start charging admission. [Hyperallergic]

A little history lesson on the Shanghai art scene in the 1980s: “[a]rt from the end of the Cultural Revolution through to the mid-1990s was insufficiently modern, fashionable, and avant-garde, and was at best expressing rebellion against a restrictive social environment.” [LEAP]

David Carr goes on WBUR to discuss the massive blow visited upon American freedom because, following terrorist threats, movie theaters unanimously decided not to show The Interview. Barely mentioned is the fact that trailers present the film as a buddy movie about a dictator who is STARVING PEOPLE, sending them to labor camps, and killing all who try to escape. Or the fact that this was not a case of government censorship but decisions made by private theaters who chose not to sell this product. But we as a nation suffer, because our comedies have been jeopardized. If the premise weren’t so ignorant, I’d put it on par with hate speech. We are a nation of assholes. [WBUR]

Jerry Saltz complains about not getting paid. This, from the man who just weeks ago, told artists to “[g]row up. Stop feeling deprived. You will never have enough money. You will never get enough love.” [Twitter]

A history of the candy cane reveals that they are not a “J” for Jesus, but the result of a fortuitous manufacturing malfunction. [The Smithsonian, via Metafilter]

And the final Miami reports continue to come in! “NADA is like Williamsburg to ABMB’s Manhattan: hip, relaxed and scruffy, and a little too much.” I haven’t seen scruff and relaxed since Portland. [Scene & Herd]

“Who buys all this shit?” and other questions raised by Christian Viveros-Fauné, when considering art fair art. “[B]eauty is passing, dumb is forever.” [artnet News]

Matthew Leifheit looks at people looking up at the Freedom Tower. [VICE]

Ew ew ew ew ew ew: artist makes soy sauce out of human hair. He was making it because he heard a rumor that China already makes it. [Vulture]

Oh, and the NYPD shot and killed someone inside a synagogue after the assailant stabbed a student at prayer early this morning. It’s on video. [NY Daily News]

There was a two-faced cat, and they lived ‘til the age of 15. Rest in peace, Frank and Louie. [io9]

Also in animal miracles, we forgot to link to this swimming owl last week. A must-watch. [Gawker]

So far, Playboy wins the Art Basel slideshows by a mile, a round-up which, unlike what’s been appearing on art publications, at least includes a moment of reflection. “Does anything truly exceptional go on here or is it all hype?” wonders Zak Stone. Hype. [Playboy]

If you live in Philadelphia, Detroit, or St. Paul, you might want to tune in to hear Bad at Sports interview Tatiana Hernandez of the Knight Foundation. She “manages a portfolio of over 350 grantees, totaling nearly $100 million in investments.” Take notes. [Bad at Sports]

Gift idea for the rich: A pink-and-yellow smiling-flower pillow from Takashi Murakami. It’s only $400! [Artspace]

Wall Street Journalist critic Joanne Kaufman has been banned from receiving free press passes from some Broadway agencies. Rick Miramontez of press agency O&M wrote a blog post expressing his dismay at Kaufman, who recently penned a column about leaving during intermission. She’s still welcome, Miramontez wrote, “If she deems a show of ours worthy enough for her (fleeting) attention, she is more than welcome to call us to arrange tickets – but she had better have a credit card handy.” [Playbill]

Tweets of Old is posting letters to Santa from the early 1900s. Among other stuff, children asked for bananas, a waste paper basket, and wood. [Tweets of Old]

Seattle police in riot gear have outfitted themselves as Robocops with bike helmets, according to this twitpic. [Twitter]

December has come, which means it’s time to get a new calendar. The time has also come to spend your money prudently on art criticism books, or blow it on ostrich pillows. Cyber Monday may be over, but the Internet still offers an abundance of cheap art purchases.

One of them is an 18-year-old. Either people have gone crazy, or there is some serious gerrymandering going on. [Mother Jones]

Pot makes headway as the legal drug of choice in Oregon and Washington, DC! [Mother Jones]

If the confused state of our nation makes you want to flee the country, try applying for a paid professional fellowship to Germany! Editor’s note: Art F City is not a partisan organization and views expressed by writers are their own. [Emerging Leaders of New York Arts]

“They’re pushing prices and eliminating 99 percent of their audience,” said dealer Robert Landau, in attendance at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern evening sale in New York last night. [New York Times]

Ooohh. The story behind the CIA funding the animated-film version of Animal Farm. [The Telegraph]

Just when you thought public art couldn’t get any worse, celebrities have designed Paddington Bear sculptures on display throughout London. Kate Moss decked out the bear in an all-gold ensemble. [The Guardian]

AFC’s Whitney Kimball was lucky enough to sit down with Suzanne Seesman at Philadelphia’s artist-run magazine The Nicola Midnight St. Claire. We talk about whether seriousness, and separating art into medium-specific categories, help art (I think mostly not) and art world elitism. What would make the art world a better place? More artist-critics like the ones at The St. Claire. [The Nicola Midnight St. Claire]

The ULTIMATE sinister gentrification story: The developer G&M Realty, who are in the process of tearing down the historic graffiti landmark 5Pointz, want to piggyback on the historic significance of that site by trademarking the name “5Pointz.” Oh, but guess what, community? They’re throwing in a developer-sanctioned graffiti wall! [Hyperallergic via DNAinfo]

The Ohio State Marching Band performs tributes to sci-fi films. Visually the band resembles ASCII Star Wars, but with references to every instance of sci fi in culture represented by tubas, trumpets, cannons, and fireworks. This is the kind of discipline and spirit I like to see representing America. [Laughing Squid]

On this week’s episode of Hello Kitty Cribs, watch a middle-age interior designer give a tour of his multi-room Hello Kitty shrine. [BBC]

“The abiding cliché of online sociality holds that one’s identity online is made up not of character traits…but of one’s likes and dislikes and the friends and acquaintances one is connected to.” Melissa Gronlund on how Rosalind Krauss’s theory of video art and narcissism stacks up with today’s Internet-inspired video. [Afterall]

London report: after a week-long protest in front of Parliament Square this past October, Occupy protesters are set to return in late November. For that next iteration, they’ve set up an open call for artwork. [Samia Gallery]

If you’re living in London, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter, expect heightened security checks at airports. Starting today. Fun! [The Washington Post]

“We’re pooping all wrong. And the toilets are to blame.” On the poor design of toilets. [Pacific Standard]

N00dies of us all over the internet this weekend. It has to do with art criticism. We’ll explain later. [Facebook]

Now there are lasers to shoot down drones. Where does it end? [The Verge]

For the journos: New York Magazine’s Vulture is looking for a senior editor. 2+ years experience editing online, and a deep love of television are required. [Mediabistro via Gabrielle Gantz on Twitter]

OH COME ON, ARTNET. These misleading titles, like the latest “Duane Michaels Shot Warhol, and Took Off,” are getting ridiculous. Click through to read a blurb about two fairly banal snapshots. [artnet News]

The only link that seems into Halloween this year is this photo of Taylor Swift wooking wike a sad unicorn. [The Cut on Twitter]

Toast editor Mallory Ortberg, the brains behind such art-historical lists as “Women Having a Horrible Time at Parties,” breaks down her thought process. “You read these [classics] in high school and the big question you ask is, Is Hamlet mad? Another big question to ask is, Is Hamlet an asshole?” [The Cut]

It’s that time of year when your inbox becomes nothing but press releases for what’s happening at next month at the Miami art fairs. Today’s tip: Ryan McNamara will enact his much-lauded 2013 Performa commission, “MEƎM: A Story Ballet About the Internet,” during Art Basel. [Art Basel]

Planning on going out tonight for Halloween? Why not memorize some of the worst jokes to tell at tonight’s parties? [Reddit]

In perhaps the total opposite of Lorna Mills at OCAD (our previous post) Michael Bell-Smith envisions an Internet of banality; uptown, you can find a quiet overview of works by the thoughtfully puzzling New Yorker artist Saul Steinberg.